Why Innovation Sucks

Yesterday on Bloomberg I heard a speech by a member of the Senate about how to improve the financial system. One of the comments was a strategy to "encourage more financial innovation" ... !! ?? What ?? Financial Innovation is what got us into the economic trouble. We don't need more "financial innovation" we need simpler financial structures. Basic borrowing and lending, not derivatives and complex "instruments" only financial wizards with 10 phd's understand (or claim to ... ).

This got me thinking. In my Day Job were being pushed to abandon "legacy" mobile devices and the programming styles and languages which supported these and adopt to "new" devices. Many of which actually don't even exist yet. It took 7 years to get our software running really good on the existing devices and now we have to abandon them and in a rush to please the market write all new software in an entirely different way for a plethora of new devices in new languages. Due to market forces, were not being 'allowed' to actually get good at anything. By the time a technology finally starts getting good, companies are forced to drop it and get on with the "Latest Thing" ... and start over. Innovation. It sucks.

Look around your house or office. How many things actually work well ?
How many business actually work well ?
It takes time, years, decades, to refine technology or business practices. Every time a new Innovation comes along and the market ("sparkly eyed consumers who want the newest hottest thing") we have to start over. We never get time to make things work well.

What works really well ? Cars, land-line Telephones, electric utilities.
Those have all taken up to 100 years to get right. TV is finally decent and now in Feb we have to throw it out and replace it with the new HDTV which almost nobody has and those who do complain of compatibility problems.

In the computer world, whats great ? Mainframes and Unix.
They are not "exciting" but they have been allowed to improve for 30-50 years by slow incremental progress until they are now the backbone of our economy.

What sucks ? Cell phones, Windows, "Innovative" financial markets.
Cell phones last about 1 year max, and while they last they rarely work.
Windows almost starts to get good when it is forced to rewrite itself from scratch every 5 years or so for "new features". Financial markets ... cant say enough about them.

I hate to think I'm a Luddite ... but I really think we should slow down a bit and forgo the "World 2.0" craze and just let us focus on making what we have work better, slowly, the hard way. Be a lot more cautious about tossing out the old and replacing it with today's shiny new toy. But with each new innovation, each fancy new feature, quality goes down, not up.

Unfortunately society is addicted to new toys, and as I say this my eyes are gleaming at my new iPhone ... damn it all !!!

J1 - New jazz by the master

I spent 2 weeks listening to nothing but jazz to try to get out of the "same old thing" and find a new groove. Layed down a Jazzy tune thats more "space" then jazz but I really like it.
This is the second recording using my new "rack". Interesting twist is the first track I layed is a Bass but played more as a lead. Drums are both robot and manual.Subtle background is a Keyboard effect.

Direct link (doesnt always work) J1
Or jump to http://docs.calldei.com/MusicMyStuff and scroll down to the J1.mp3 attachment.

Phones like watches - Why have just one ?

For years the phone companies have been trying to "lock" people into their cell network by every trick in the book. Subsidies, carrier specific plans, phones "locked" to carriers, proprietary hardware, proprietary software and services. Everything they can think of to make you that once you buy their phone you cant use it on another carrier.

In the process of locking phones to carriers they phone companies are also locking you to only one phone. The entire business practice is aimed at "one phone per user" like that's a good thing. They are thinking "So 1999" ...

The carriers want everyone to have a phone so they built up this complex business and technical infrastructure that makes it inconvenient to share phones either to other people or carriers.


You know,so they can make more money. Sure. make money.

But today I just realized that has backfired ! I have multiple phones from work (because I have to write software on different models). Its gotten to the point where I sometimes have to choose which phone to take with me and its annoying because even though I have multiple plans,

the phones have are all distinct identifying services (based on the business model that I shouldn't be sharing phones !). All this time I thought I was unique ...I mean who has 6 cell phones but a nerd working for a PDA software company ?

Until I saw this ...
( http://www.redherring.com///blogs/25608 )

I Want one of those !!!!!

I like my iPhone and I love my ATT Tilt, and even the treo is nice to have around sometimes.

But this ICE phone is COOL. But maybe not for every event. Maybe just when I'm out horseback riding (or stalking evil laser equipped sharks). But its really impractical to switch phones ! Thanks to telco's. Their antiquated oh-so-10-year-old business model is aimed at getting everyone a phone and neglected encouraging people to have MULTIPLE phones !

My thought for today is ... Phones are like watches. Like jewelry, like cars or shoes. People want different ones for different occasions. No way I'm taking my iPhone with me skiing or to the beach, even horseback riding I'm concerned I'd fall off and break it. Same with my watches. I have a Swiss Army watch for "sports" trips, and pretty one for dress.

Attention Telcos worldwide. Get your head out of the sand and start selling us on multiple phones not one ! Triple your revenue per customer. You've already saturated the market so quit with the zero-sum game of trying to get people to switch carriers ... you wont win that way. Instead encourage people to share phones, switch carriers, use multiple carriers and mostly use more phones! Dont lock your accounts to single SIM cards, let accounts access multiple SIM cards (maybe with a push of a button switch the "active" phone") Encourage us to buy as many phones as possible!. Don't fall for the trap of the "One Phone That Does It All", sure there' s a niche for that but instead sell a "Dress Model", a "Sports Model", "Basics" , "Business" model and encourage us to get them all, instead of having to choose only one that fits our square peg.

Software Companies get on the wagon ! Cross port your apps and let the licenses work across all a persons phone. Write smarter sync software that syncs across phones, not just Desktop to Phone.

Turn your phone collection into the analogy of your watch collection (or for the women, their Jewelry box). Going out for the night on a hot date ? Bike riding ? The Beach ? or the Office ?

Pick the right phone for the occasion.

Sell to us oh phone companies we have money to burn !

Google Chrome - a Blazing fast browser

I've been a die-hard Internet Explorer user for years.   While I used to be a Netscape fan, and loved to hate Microsoft I was won over to the dark side years ago when I had to write comercial web applications and IE is simply the dominant browser in the business world.  Every few years I try a different browser like Safari, or Firefox, but I've never found them a compelling improvement in my oppinion.

Today is a new day.

I discovered "Google Chrome" via Slashdot which was commenting on the novelty of its introduction in cartoon format (http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/).

Reading this cartoon I was impressed with the technical discussions hidden in the cute format.

So I downloaded chrome from here: http://www.google.com/chrome (Beta, Windows only right now).   My first experience is impressive.  It downloaded, installed, and RAN in under 30 seconds. Wow.  And its snappy.  Well it seemed fast but its hard to tell.

So I threw at it a problematic web page which I use frequently.

http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath-functions/

Try this in IE, I'd love to know your experience.  On My system it takes about 30 seconds to several minutes to load.  And after loaded, its almost unusable.  Page downs can hang IE for several seconds, and clicking on links in the TOC can take 5-10 seconds or more to jump to the right place.  Its not an exceedingly complex document, its big but not like a comercial web site with gigabytes of flash.  Its just HTML on a long page but brings IE to its knees.

Try Firefox.  I gave up after 5 minutes and it hadnt completely loaded and rendered.

Try Chrome.  3 seconds I had the page up, and every user interaction is instant.   There is no delay at all paging, scrolling or clicking jump links.  I'd  have fallen off my chair if it didnt have arms.  Wow.  Have to say I'm vastly impressed.  

There's a lot of other interesting things about this browser and I am anxious to try them, but for performance alone, its incredible.   I've never "recommended" a browser before but now I have to say ... you've got to try it.  I'll probably have to keep IE around forever for the same reason I switched to it, that its still the dominant browser for business, and as long as I'm working on web applications they have to be tested in IE first.   But for day to day browsing ... Chrome is compelling.  I'll definately keep it around for a while.  Hopefully it goes past "beta".

New Music - Jack-A-Roe

Jack-A-Row (with and without Vocals)Old "traditional" tune. A slow easy ballad about a a salior and his sweetheart.Sad start, happy ending. With and without vocals.Clean rythm guitar, lead, human & robot drums and midi bass.

http://docs.calldei.com/MusicMyStuff

Speaking at XML Confrence (Balisage)

My presentation about xmlsh (http://www.xmlsh.org/) has been accepted at Balisage 2008.

http://www.balisage.net/Program.html#w1100l

Loose Lucy now with Vocals

I added a vocal track to the Rock'n "Loose Lucy" ... experimenting with "Bill Shatner" style singing :)

http://docs.calldei.com/MusicMyStuff

scroll to the bottom ... this direct link might or might not work

http://docs.calldei.com/MusicMyStuff/files.xml?action=download&file=LooseLucyVocals.mp3